The effects of training in psychotherapy on therapists' responses to client hostility

Listening To Silence

“…Morgenstern quoted Weisman [1955, p. 258]: "The basic need is to understand silence, not merely to get the patient to talk." Murphy and Lamb [1973] compared the responses to clients of counselors in training with those of untrained staff and found that the training led to an increase in the percentage of time spent in client-counselor silence, whereas this percentage decreased over time in the un-trained staff. Murphy and Lamb suggested that silence was possibly a measure of effectiveness in counseling rather than one of anxiety.…”